He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

The line is a barbed paradox: it inverts the usual moral ledger by treating “virtues” as personally irritating and “vices” as charming. Its wit depends on confessing to a speaker’s own partiality—suggesting that social judgments are often driven less by ethics than by temperament, taste, and tribal loyalty. Read this way, the remark satirizes how we can resent admirable qualities in an opponent (earnestness, prudence, rectitude) while excusing or even enjoying flaws in those we like (rakishness, audacity, rule-breaking). Whether or not Churchill coined it, the epigram captures a recognizable political and social psychology: admiration and dislike frequently precede the moral reasoning that is later used to justify them.